12/24/2013

Connecting Seas - Getty Research Institute Los Angeles

A Visual History Of Discoveries And Encounters

Since antiquity, people have crossed the seas to
explore distant shores and discover other cultures. The introduction of the
printing press made it possible for illustrated accounts of travel and
exploration to find wide distribution in Europe, and, soon after, other
continents. Connecting Seas: A Visual
History of Discoveries and Encounters, on view December 7, 2013 - April
13, 2014 at the Getty Research Institute, Getty Center, draws on the Getty
Research Institute’s extensive special collections to reveal how adventures on
other continents and discoveries of other cultures were perceived, represented,
and transmitted during past ages of ocean travel.

“This exhibition prompts us to
see and consider the long history of cultural encounters, an endeavor we are
still pursuing today,” said Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research
Institute. “The Getty Research Institute’s special collections are rich troves
of original sources that offer insight into the history of representation
spanning five hundred years.”

Featuring rare books, prints, maps, and navigational
instruments - from Renaissance prints to Napoleon's monumental folios on Egypt
to panoramic images known as vues d'optique, photographs and children's games -
the exhibition traces the fascinating course of scholarly investigation and
comprehension of cultures in Asia, South America, and Africa. These intriguing
original works from the sixteenth- to the twenty-first century, mostly from
European, but some of Asian and South-American origins, chart diverse
narratives of discovery, exploration, commerce, and colonization, and
illuminate the multiple and various levels of encounter at the roots of today’s
globalization. The exhibition is organized under three themes: “Orienting the
World,” “Expeditions and Exploration,” and “Commerce and Colonialism” and was
collaboratively curated by six GRI curators: Peter Bonfitto, David Brafman,
Louis Marchesano, Isotta Poggi, Kim Richter and Frances Terpak.

Most of the rare material featured in Connecting Seas is of European
origin, which reflects the history of the GRI. In the past, the GRI was
primarily dedicated to collecting and exploring the Western tradition. Some
objects from other parts of the world already signal a recent programmatic
change. As the GRI continues to broaden its scope of collecting and research,
this more global approach will become a more visible aspect of exhibitions and
public programs.

Connecting Seas draws heavily from the GRI’s special
collections, including prints, photographs, drawings, rare books and ephemera
from the 16th to 20th centuries. It also features navigational instruments, a
painting on the North Atlantic slave trade and other marine objects generously
loaned by the Kelton Foundation that directly complement the GRI’s collections
on display.

Through deep research in the GRI’s rich holdings of
primary sources and historical objects and documentation, the exhibition
interprets images from the past to see how they transferred and represented the
encounter of cultures. As Gaehtgens states, “by understanding how such
encounters were embraced in the past, we can learn to think critically about
our contemporary experiences and its challenges.”

“This exhibition invites the viewer to reflect on the
complex, long history of exploration and exchange,” added Marcia Reed, Chief
Curator, Getty Research Institute. “For every instance of misunderstanding,
prejudice or exploitation there are examples of persistent intellectual
curiosity, generosity, and empathy.”

Orienting the World

Mapping the world was the first step in discovering
new lands. The first section of the exhibition displays the techniques and
tools early explorers developed in order to navigate the seas. Knowledge of
astronomical orientation and the invention of maritime instruments were
necessary to face the challenges of ocean voyages. For example, an Islamic
astrolabe from Maghreb helped mariners navigate by charting the stars.

As civilization gradually came to understand the Earth
as a globe, discoverers created early representations of the continents that
combined experience and imagination. A woodcut map from Magdeburg in 1597
depicts the world as a clover leaf with Jerusalem at the center, and the
continents of Europe, Asia and Africa emerging from the center.

Expeditions and Exploration

Early travelogues of Europeans who visited Asia and
Africa were at times extraordinarily fanciful, and hearsay reports generated
strange imaginings and misunderstandings about other lands and cultures. In
many cases bizarre legends were passed down over centuries, understood as true.
A woodcut in Giovanni Botero’s early seventeenth-century book, Man from the
Wilds of Asia, depicts a headless man with a face on his chest. The notion that
such people had been seen in Africa and throughout Asia was centuries old at
the time and could be traced to al-Qazwini, a 13th century scholar of Baghdad.

This second section of the exhibition explores how
early travelers’ tales with such misinformation gradually became replaced by
more scholarly studies. Exploration and collecting were followed by study and
analysis. Enlightenment values motivated rigorous scholarly approaches to
distant continents, but they also often coincided with imperialist ambitions of
European rulers. Napoleon invited geographers, archaeologists, and scientists
to accompany him on military campaigns in Egypt. After their return to France,
this team of experts published precise, firsthand observations and
groundbreaking research on the entire Egyptian world. Preoccupation with other
cultures became the domain of professionals who valued firsthand knowledge of
distant lands and employed systematic and scientific approaches. Among the most
remarkable of these was the German explorer and intellectual Alexander von
Humboldt, who traveled extensively to many parts of Latin America. He returned
to Berlin and Paris with significant specimens and notes and published his
research. A German lithograph dating to the mid-1800s on view in the exhibition
depicts Humboldt in his study, surrounded by maps, papers and objects from his
travels.

Commerce and Colonialism

The third section of the exhibition examines how
exploration, colonization, and exploitation characterized the age of modern
imperialism, in which European nations competed for control over territories in
Africa, Asia, and the Americas. International exhibitions in European and North
American cities displayed the products of faraway lands or reproductions. Some
children’s games disseminated prejudice - advertisements for the Belgian
company Chocolat de Beukelaer from the early-twentieth century featured
disturbing cartoon scenes of colonial encounters in Africa - and world’s fairs
even displayed human beings who were brought to the European capitals along
with (often inaccurate) reconstructions of their original dwellings.

Despite the rise in scholarly perspectives on
exploration and travel during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, racial
prejudices were often spread by in prints, journals, and photographs as trade
among the continents increased. (Text: Getty Research Institute)